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In the 50 and over since Who knocks on my doorwe have a good idea of what to expect from a photo of Martin Scorsese. An active camera. A soundtrack loaded with deadly needle drops or an eclectic score. Characters in a state of mortal and spiritual torment. Whole worlds brought back to life in sumptuous details. And when everything is together, as almost always, you get those unforgettable movie moments: This very slow dolly-in on Johnny Boy in Medium streets as he walks around a bar for "Jumpin 'Jack Flash"; visit in a tour through the Copacabana to "Then he kissed me" in GoodFellas; Jake LaMotta boxing in the ring with "Cavalleria Rusticana Intermezzo" at the opening credits of Furious bulllurking the lonely space in which he will be locked forever.
And these are the most obvious ones. Cinema buffs can eventually accumulate dozens of favorites: the crane of a monk killed Kundun, the reflected sunlight that causes Newland Archer to imagine a different destiny for himself at the end of The age of innocence, Travis Bickle escaped one last time, painfully, in Taxi driveretc. The examples are infinite. And a unifying impression is that Scorsese has shown all her imagination for every shot, and her long-time writer, Thelma Schoonmaker, has accompanied them with the breakthrough of Tom Cruise's sledgehammer pop. The color of money. It is a dynamism and intentionality that has made him perhaps the greatest living American filmmaker.
He also makes documentaries.
Are these images of Martin Scorsese too? With very few exceptions, one of them The ringSean Fennessey – Ranked lists of best Scorsese films usually only include two documentaries, The last Waltz and Shine a light, two studio-produced concert films on the band and the Rolling Stones, respectively. And the reason is that, beyond the larger issues of financing and distribution in Hollywood, Scorsese seems to invest the same creative investment in it as in its other functions. The choreography is mapped, song by song, for maximum effect, with Scorsese and a battery of leading cinematographers orchestrating each camera movement optimally. In a funny piece behind the scenes Shine a light, the Stones joke Scorsese by retaining the final setlist until the last moment, forcing him to arrange his throws list into stacks ranging from "set" to "improbable".
But forgetting the other Scorsese documentaries still leaves a dozen films in the cold, including extraordinarily accomplished films like Rolling Thunder Review: A Story of Bob Dylan by Martin Scorsese, which is premiering at the movies and on Netflix this week. Admittedly, it is necessary to plead in favor of this categorical neglect. Some master filmmakers, such as Stanley Kubrick or Quentin Tarantino, organize their careers carefully, and each new film is an event that has been preparing for years. Scorsese's adventures are more like Jonathan Demme, including Talking Heads Stop making sense is in the pantheon with The last Waltz like the best of their kind, but whose fiction resides in Haiti (L & # 39; agronomist) or the book tour by Jimmy Carter (Plains man) or his own family (Cousin Bobby) were considered ancillary projects, if they were at all. They were not Melvin and Howard or Something wild or Thesilenceofthelambs.
In the case of Scorsese, it is not necessarily unfair to deposit fiction films a little differently – if it is even worth worrying about these ranking systems. Several of his documentaries, including the portrait of less than an hour of Italian-American and American boy and the profile piece by Fran Lebowitz Speaking in public, find Scorsese who simply comes with a camera in a conversation. (Or in American boy, in a hot tub.) Others rely heavily on archival footage, like his two Dylan documents, Rolling Thunder Review and No direction, his George Harrison career George Harrison: Living in the material world, or his many professorial tours through the cinema that influenced him, such as A personal journey with Martin Scorsese through American cinema, My trip to Italy, or A letter to Elia. His documents lack neither substance nor imagination, nor do they reject the formal limits.
Still, Scorsese is a champion of personal cinema and, in this respect, his documentaries are full of curiosity and passion, and provide a fascinating window into the things that interest him most. He is a collector of stories. He is a fan and archivist. He is a thinker and a political radical. And, in the best cases, his fiction uses his sensibility more directly than any fictional feature film – how he sees himself as a commercial artist, which he is passionate about as a connoisseur from popular entertainment and the specific works that have delivered a boy's asthma small apartment on Elizabeth Street in New York to the top echelon of Hollywood. In a given year, he may have spent less energy Speaking in public than Shutter Island Or on George Harrison: Living in the material world than Hugo Or on Rolling Thunder Review that his upcoming Netflix criminal epic L & # 39; Irish, due in December. But the effort is significant anyway.
The history collector
Italian-American (1974) American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince (1978) Speaking in public (2010) The 50-year argument (2014)
Among the many charms of Italian-AmericanScorsese's 49-minute black-and-white conversation with her parents, Catherine and Charles, is the closing credits that details the recipe for her mother's spaghetti sauce. Throughout the film, while Scorsese listens to the story of the family's trip to New York's housing and immigrant neighborhoods, Catherine returns to the kitchen to take care of the sauce then finds her place next to her husband. modest apartment where Martin grew up on Elizabeth Street. Fans of Scorsese's work know her parents well, especially Catherine, unforgettable as the disembodied voice of Rupert Pupkin's mother in The king of comedy, begging him to "down" him, while practicing monologues in the basement, and as mother of Tommy DeVito Goodfellas, who gives him a butcher's knife to take care of the "hoof" of deer caught in the grille of the car outside. Scorsese would not have guessed they would live another 20 years after Italian-Americanbut he has the instinct to record them for posterity – not just those precious family stories, which are the stories of so many immigrants, but also the way they interact with each other and with him. It's a rare thing, a movie at home with universal appeal.
The aesthetics of these storytelling documentaries are simple and respectful, Scorsese often interfering in the frame and interacting with his subjects to draw anecdotes as if they were at the bar or sitting around the table. American boy the place on a couch in front of Steven Prince, who played a dazzling role in Scorsese's career. Taxi driver "Easy Andy", the black market salesman who sells weapons to Travis Bickle but can not interest him in recreational pharmaceuticals. Prince's poignant stories of addiction and his various roles as a Neil Diamond roadie and gas station attendant are so rampant that they look like urban legends. Tarantino was inspired enough to use two scenes of American boy for his own movies: Chris Penn and Michael Madsen greet each other without a word with a wrestling match Reserve dogs and the adrenaline kick to the heart that revives a woman in overdose pulp Fiction.
Speaking in public and The 50-year argumentEvery document produced by the HBO documentary channel uses the fine operator Ellen Kuras to give it a sharper look, but they both talk about Scorsese recognizing the New York institutions while they are still at the party. Scorsese does not have to do anything with Fran Lebowitz, the flawless author and public mind, except to have a drink at the Waverly Inn and breathe infectiously to the jokes of Lebowitz. Speaking in public broadcasts Lebowitz images on stage and on the move, but it's mostly a forum for New Yorkers who speak faster than Scorsese to denounce racial and gender disparities, its critical nature and what's happened when James Thurber was staged a postage stamp.
Codirecté by David Tedeschi, the publisher of his latest documentaries, The 50-year argument is a natural companion of Speaking in public, both on the virtues of risk taking and provocation. Scorsese's tribute to the New York Review Books and its longtime editor, Robert Silvers, sees this publication as an intellectual movement, ready to challenge state power and conventional wisdom on issues such as Selma, Vietnam and gun control, and to leave overflowing important debates. Silvers would die shortly after the release of the film, but the continuity of the magazine's principles, faced with the turmoil of the media sector, follows Scorsese's 50-year career. They have in common this mixture of risk-taking and rigor, a desire to break the discussion by worrying about the slightest editorial detail.
The fan
The last Waltz (1978) Shine a light (2008) George Harrison: Living in the material world (2011)
These films all have the same kind of end-of-era urgency that inspired The last Waltz, which turns the band's final concert into a noisy, animated celebration of a generation of rock and folk giants. Scorsese's connection to the music scene goes back Woodstockthat he co-edited and the group leader, Robbie Robertson, recruited him to film the series on the basis of Medium streets, who had used songs in a dynamic way. Because the show as a whole and its special guests, including Dylan, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Mitchell Joni, Neil Young, Van Morrison and many others, had to be staged with such care, It was the perfect opportunity for a planner like Scorsese to redefine what could be a concert film. Marshaling some of the best directors of photography in the world as cameramen, Michael Chapman (Taxi driver), Vilmos Zsigmond (Dating of the third type), and John Toll, future winner of an Oscar (Brave HeartAmong them – Scorsese not only scripted the entire concert, but also organized a sound stage at the MGM for other performances, including a superb version of "The Weight" with the Staple Singers.
Although some of the behind-the-scenes interviews The last Waltz drift into the self-mythologizing rock god that could inspire This is the spinal tapScorsese has redefined the notion of what could be a concert film. The focus on the stage, without the viewer taking shortcuts, allows for an experience without medium, but Scorsese is aiming for something deeper. The cuts, close-ups and camera movements, all punctuated, put the film's realization on a par with musical talent and have an impact that even sitting in the front row could not. The cameos are all superb, especially the three songs of Dylan to close the show, but when the whole troupe of characters enters the scene for "I Shall Be Released", it is a moment of synthesis and galvanization for the 70's music, a meticulously charged piece of history in the making.
After putting the Rolling Stones in as heavy rotation on his soundtracks, Scorsese returned the favor with Shine a lightwho takes his Last waltz planning at another level, with steps explicitly designed to adapt to the type of camera work that he wishes to achieve. At best, the movie is a great way to experience an arena show from the end of the period at a fraction of the cost, with bonus special appearances by Jack White, Christina Aguilera and an electrifying Buddy Guy. However, there is a quality preserved and hermetic to Shine a light it removes all the spontaneity and passion associated with a good rock show, let alone the uniqueness of an event like the last concert of the group. There is a gap between the heyday of a rock age and a profit for the Clinton Foundation, and Scorsese's camera pyrotechnics are not enough to fill it.
Among the subjects of his documentary profile, George Harrison is more elusive than Dylan, who has made a career slipping into the characters and refusing to let his critics or fans pinpoint him. As the third wheel of the Lennon-McCartney songwriting group, Harrison was generally good for one or two songs per Beatles album. Abbey Road The duo of "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun" are inscribed in more distant projects, like the movie "Within You Without You" based on the sitar and the epic epic of "While My Guitar Gently". Weeps ". For Scorsese, however, it is Harrison's life a spiritual seeker who attracts the most personal interest, rooted in the discovery that money and fame would not quench that thirst deeper. George Harrison: Living in the material world works like a classic Beatles documentary from a different angle – it's Scorsese, every living witness presents itself as a talking head – but the movie really takes off once Harrison has gone solo and reveals a complete vision that the band had suffocated. Stories on the making of his successful triple album All things must pass argument for his artistic genius, but Scorsese remains sensitive to Harrison's contradictory nature. He was a peaceful man dedicated to a higher vocation. he was also the materialist who wrote "Taxman".
L & # 39; artist
A personal journey with Martin Scorsese through American cinema (1995) My trip to Italy (1999) No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005) A letter to Elia (2010) Rolling Thunder Review: A Story of Bob Dylan by Martin Scorsese (2019)
Although his material on George Harrison is a complete biography ranging from birth to death, Scorsese's impetus is to highlight the parts of a story that matter most to him and to dismiss the rest. And the length does not matter: A personal journey with Martin Scorsese through American cinema (225 minutes) My trip to Italy (246) No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (208) and Rolling Thunder Review (142) are only partial stories, limited to the themes and images that most interest Scorsese as an artist. "It's like an imaginary museum," says Scorsese in A personal journey"And we can not get into all the halls because we just do not have the time." He is there to give the public the best conference he has ever attended, but they will only understand the cinema as he sees it, not like the pocket story they could expect more than four hours.
A personal journey, My trip to Italy, and Letter to Elia, her short ode to Elia Kazan, could be viewed together in installments, as complements to an informal film education. Scorsese's enthusiasm for these films is not too dry or too high, partly because the clips themselves are so full of emotion and stylistic brilliance. Scorsese begins A personal journey with memories to see Duel in the sun, a Technicolor Western who was criticized at the time at the time, but who is ripe with a sin that has remained. Seeing these documentaries is the best way to understand the evolution of Scorsese's sensibility: his attraction to the drama and emotional elevation of American genre films by directors such as Sam Fuller, Anthony Mann and Vincente Minnelli; the realism of the streets and the lyrical grandeur of Italian cinema from the mid-1940s to the early 1960s, as well as masters such as Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini; and the intensity of the bedrock of Elia Kazan.
Scorsese's in-depth knowledge of the film's history is indisputable, but what makes these documentaries special is how much they relate to his memories and how much they are in keeping with the way the films are make feel. When he talks about Kazan At the edge of the water in Letter to Eliait is not a drought on social realism and method, but a reverie still alive on the power to see his life on the screen. "It's the faces, the bodies and the way they moved," he says. "The voices and their sound. They were like the people I saw every day. … I saw the same mix of toughness and tenderness. It was as if the world from where I was coming from, the world I knew was important. As if the people I knew were important, whatever their faults. "
Bob Dylan's Scorsese documentaries do not overlap: No direction covers Dylan's career in the run-up to his infamous Newport Folk Festival in 1965, when he put down his acoustic guitar and became electric, and Rolling Thunder Review covers his extraordinary traveling show of 57 shows in small towns and places in 1975 and 1976. But the central question of each is the same: how do you manage the conflict between personal expression and commercial expectations? This is the theme of Scorsese's career, as for any director who has survived and thrived in a studio system that has changed so much over the last century. In Dylan, Scorsese recognizes the chameleonic genius of an artist who reinvents himself and constantly challenges what he expects of him, but who remains in the image.
No direction It's an act of defiance: do not make fun of the crowd of "Judas" who nodded, but reject the idea that he should stay in his counter-cultural box. A label like "The Voice of a Generation" was not self-enforced, and his commitment to continuing Woody Guthrie's tradition of acoustic protest songs lasted only so long as he felt at home. comfortable wearing this particular skin. Dylan turned tormented music journalists into sports – see Do not look back– but he plays directly with Scorsese, who understands what it's like to pursue his ambitions against those who have a narrow idea of what you should do.
In the new Rolling Thunder Review, Scorsese leans back into the force "This movie must be played loud! The last Waltz and the Newport '65 show, but between the treasure of live footage gathered during the tour, he also indulges in a bit of Dylan jester. Some of the talking heads and anecdotes of the film are absolute nonsense, such as the testimony of a Dutch filmmaker Pissy or his representative Jack Tanner (Michael Murphy), the false politician of the false documentary Robert Altman. Tanner '88. It's a "Bob Dylan story", after all, so do not take it all for cash, which could be Scorsese's way of paying tribute to Renaldo and Clara, the four-hour film misplaced (and impossible to find) that Dylan built around the material of this tour.
The "documentary" label does not easily apply to Rolling Thunder Review, who does not bother to draw the dividing line between reality and fiction, but it is true that Dylan conducts auditoriums of 2,000 to 3,000 seats across America. Dylan has become a foolish business, a real haemorrhage of money – and this before the further quaintness of conceiving it as an old-fashioned medicine show and another tribute. to the French classic of 1945 Children of paradise.
Forty years of touring, Dylan often makes fun of the real and fictitious incidents of a tour he remembers only vaguely, and Scorsese the story collector, the fan and the artist have fun with him. He knows enough of his John Ford to recall the famous line of The man who fired the Liberty valance: "When the legend becomes reality, print it."
Scott Tobias is an independent Chicago film and television writer. His work appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Vulture, Varietyand other publications.
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